Top UK corporate bosses earn in four days what average worker earns in year: Study

A study carried out by a UK think tank has revealed that bosses of Britain's biggest corporate companies have made more money in the first four days of the new year than the average British worker will make till the year-end, reported BBC. The study by High Pay Centre, the think tank, says that by lunchtime on Thursday (January 4) they had earned more than 34,963 pounds, the annual median wage of workers in Britain.

The centre says that top bosses will enjoy an average annual reward amount of 3.81 million pounds. This means that they are earning 1170 pounds per hour. This comes to 109 times what an average worker earns.

In order to surpass the yearly income of the average worker, lawyers in top cities in the country will have to wait a bit longer, but not too much. By the beginning of the next week, they will have crossed the mark.

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When it comes to leading bankers, they will overtake the figure by January 17.

BBC reported that the High Pay Centre made the calculations based on salaries published by the companies in their annual reports.

The news outlet quoted the Trade Union Congress (TUC), which said there were "obscene levels of pay inequality".

There are reportedly occasional claims in the UK that top earners are not paid adequately in the UK.

"When politicians listen to these misguided views, it's unsurprising that we end up with massive inequality, and stagnating living standards for the majority of the population," said High Pay Centre director Luke Hildyard.

Counterview

BBC quoted an interesting opinion of Professor Len Shackleton from the free-market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs. Shackleton said that since high-earning individuals paid a higher proportion of taxes, a crackdown on their earnings would lead to increased tax bills for others.

"Top earners pay stonking amounts in taxes: the top 1% of all earners in this country pay almost 30% of income tax. If we somehow stopped these people earning large amounts, many of them would leave the country and we would all have to pay higher taxes to compensate," he said.

"A CEO can make, or break, a company and therefore it's unsurprising they are paid generously," he said.